


Still Got Infinity Ahead of Her

by story_monger



Series: You're The Only North Star (Platonic VLD Week) [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, Pre-Canon, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 12:50:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10021457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: In which Allura looks back on her childhood with her father and the Yellow Lion, and looks forward to her role as the leader of the new paladins of Voltron. Her only real conclusion is that being King Alfor's daughter is a mixed blessing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Platonic VLD Week
> 
> Day 1 (Feb. 26): Sunlight / Moonlight  
> Day 2 (Feb. 27): Quiet / Chaos  
>  **Day 3 (Feb. 28): Lions / Bonding**  
>  Day 4 (Mar. 1): Enemies / Family  
> Day 5 (Mar. 2): Got your back / Don’t let go  
> Day 6 (Mar. 3): Injury / Healing  
> Day 7 (Mar. 4): Free Day / AU

**10,000 years ago, Altea**

The flaming season started early that rotation, surprising everyone and annoying Allura deeply. Usually, Allura took her combat lessons outside, in the training grounds. But yesterquintent and this morning, Allura was told that she couldn’t very well run around with the weather like it was. Allura thought this was demonstrably silly; she’d played outside during the flaming season before, and she’d only ever come out of it with a few bruises and burns.

“But it’s been especially nasty out there, Princess,” Coran told her on the second afternoon. She had wandered into his office, hoping that he would have something to distract her from the reports she was supposed to complete for her tutor. She’d found that sitting on Coran’s office floor was usually a good way to get a story or interesting conversation from him.

“Not so nasty,” Allura said, but she couldn’t say that with much conviction. One of the visiting governors had come inside just that morning with a massive lump on her head from being knocked by an especially large rock.

Allura sighed gustily, flopping onto her back and staring up at the fiberglass ceiling of Coran’s office. It thumped gently with the onslaught of flaming rocks.

“Do you plan on moping around my floor all quintent?” Coran asked.

“Mm, just most of it,” Allura said, flashing him a cheeky grin. “Or better yet. I’ll hide under your desk and grab the ankles of the people who come in here and are rude to you.”

“Perfect,” Coran said, not looking up from his screen. “If it’s Olida, try to steal his shoes while you’re at it.”

Allura giggled and rocked to a sit just as Coran’s desk chimed with a new message. Coran gestured for it to open and glanced at it, then paused and leaned in closer.

“Hm,” he said.

“What?” Allura scrambled to a stand and hurried to Coran’s desk.

“Looks as if your father is back early,” Coran said, pushing himself to a stand. “Must be the weather.” He held out a hand to Allura. “Shall we go give him a good welcome party?”

Allura grabbed Coran’s hand and tugged him toward the door. That quickly devolved into a race to see who could get to the hangars first. Allura won, but she suspected that Coran had thrown the race.

They waited together in front of the Yellow Lion’s hangar, Allura clutching Coran’s hand in both of her own and jumping slightly with excitement. Finally, when the door slid open, she burst forward and straight into her father’s waiting arms.

“Papa!” she shouted, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Papa, I finally learned the Jetas sequence!”

“Did you now?” Alfor asked, leaning back slightly to see her face. He reached out to tuck a strand of hair out of her face. “You’ll have to show me.” He hefted Allura higher on his hip and grinned at Coran. “Well, Coran, I have to say I’m disappointed,” he said. “I leave for a few quintents, and suddenly the flaming season is upon us.”

“I’ll write a sternly worded letter,” Coran said. Alfor laughed and clapped Coran’s shoulder, and Allura tucked her head against her father’s shoulder. She loved moments like this, when her father and Coran were both happy and she got to sit in the middle, absorbing all of it.

“How was the Yerral system then?” Coran asked as he followed Alfor down the hall. “Still sniping over those trade deals?”

“Of course; they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves otherwise,” Alfor said. He glanced to Allura. “In a few rotations, I’ll have to bring you with me to the Yerral system. They have the most exquisite architecture; you’d love it.”

“All right,” Allura said agreeably. She wasn’t all that taken by architecture, but she liked traveling and meeting people from other systems. And any chance to spend time with her father was a plus.

“How long did Zarkon last before he found an excuse to go impress the young Yerralis with his flying?” Coran asked.

Alfor didn’t reply immediately, and in his arms, Allura became aware of how he tensed ever so slightly. She peered up into his face, but the next second, he laughed lightly.

“He was around for the important parts,” Alfor said. “Besides, this was more Illeya’s wheelhouse. She was able to strike an impressive bargain on kita shipments, actually.”

Allura tuned out at that point. She knew that when she was grown she’d have to know all about this sort of diplomacy and governing talk, but for now she liked her combat and culture classes and didn’t concern herself with much else.

It was getting close to the evening meal, so the three of them had food sent to Alfor’s private quarters. Allura got to demonstrate her Jetas sequence with a vase instead of a blaster, and Alfor and Coran applauded and gave her pointers. After that, Allura managed to convince them to let her work on her reports on Alfor’s bed while they discussed business over the remains of the meal. She sprawled on her stomach, legs kicking in the air, and tapped through her datapad. Coran and Alfor spoke in low voices, the kind of droning chatter that was practically a lullaby with the number of times Allura had fallen asleep to it.

“—thinks she’s showing quite a bit of promise in her sensitivity to quintessence,” Coran said. Allura didn’t move, but she stopped reading and strained to hear Alfor’s response.

“Really? So young?”

“Read the report when you have time. It’s impressive.”

“Hm.” Allura could feel her father’s eyes on her, and she lifted her head to meet his gaze.

“Are you talking about me?” she asked innocently.

“Apparently, you had a visit with the druids while I was gone,” Alfor said.

“They made me do a lot of meditating and things,” Allura said.

“Did you like it?”

“A bit boring.”

Alfor chuckled, but his expression was thoughtful. “How busy are you tomorrow, dear?” he asked.

“If the weather keeps up, then my combat class is still cancelled,” Allura said, wrinkling her nose.

“Come find me then,” Alfor said.

“Why?” Allura asked, grinning.

“That’s not how surprises work, Allura,” Alfor said. Allura tried to coax him into giving her a hint, but Alfor remained tightlipped.

***

The next day, Allura did as asked and sought out her father in the engineering workshops in late morning. She loitered while he finished up a conversation with the head engineer, a tall, broad Galra named Elzak. When he was finished, Alfor took Allura’s hand and led her down the hall toward the lion hangars. Allura’s curiosity became truly piqued at that point. She’d spent some time with the lions, but it was usually under special circumstances. Rarely did she get to see them with just her father.

Alfor led them to the Yellow Lion’s hangar and slid the door open. The lights flickered on as they walked inside, illuminating the Yellow Lion’s looming form. Allura tipped her head back as far as she could and grinned up at the massive head. She imagined that the Yellow Lion smiled back.

“How is she today?” Allura asked, trotting to keep up for Alfor’s longer strides.

“She’s contemplating the progression of dust into planets,” Alfor said.

“Are you being serious or joking?” Allura demanded.

“Deadly serious,” Alfor said gravely, but there was still a spark of humor in his voice. When they got closer to the Yellow Lion, the hangar filled with the sound of grinding machinery, and the Yellow Lion’s head ducked down to them, the jaw hanging open. Allura jumped, but Alfor’s presence remained steady, so Allura did her best to act like she hadn’t been startled. She remained quiet as she followed Alfor up the Yellow Lion’s jaw ramp. The lights flickered on when they entered the cockpit, and Alfor brought them to a halt.

“Allura,” he said. “You know something about my bond with the Yellow Lion.”

“A little,” Allura said, keeping a tight grip on his hand. “You share a mind when you fly her, right?”

“Something like that.” Alfor shifted, and suddenly Allura found her father kneeling in front of her, giving her a strangely intense expression. “It’s based on quintessence. You’ve learned about that, yes?”

“Yes,” Allura murmured. She wasn’t quite nervous, but she could tell something large was happening right now. Something important.

“Allura.” Alfor seemed to hesitate, taking Allura’s hands in his own. “The druids say you have incredible aptitude for quintessence. For reading it. For manipulating its flow. They say that you remind them of your great-grandmother in sheer talent.”

“I…I didn’t know that,” Allura breathed. Everyone knew about her great-grandmother, the Queen who had expanded Altea’s reach and power to new heights during her reign. She had been very powerful; the idea of being compared to her made a strange mixture of pride and nervousness bloom in Allura’s chest.

“I would ask you something,” Alfor said, speaking slowly. “And I want to let you say no if this frightens you.” Allura didn’t speak, and Alfor placed a hand on her arm. “Would you try speaking to the Yellow Lion?”

“I—what?”

“Try connecting to her. The lions’ consciousness is pure quintessence; you should be able to make the connection very easily.”

“But only the paladins can speak to the lions.”

“I am the Yellow Paladin, and I am giving my permission. I have already asked the Yellow Lion, and she is agreeable to it. You have both her and my support.”

Allura stared at her father, searching for the catch. But she couldn’t see any; her father watched her with a steady, patient gaze. “Why?” Allura found herself asking. “Why do you want me to talk to her?”

Alfor leaned back slightly. “See if you can do it first,” he said gently. “And if you can, I’ll explain further.” Allura bit her bottom lip, but after a moment, she nodded. Alfor exhaled, almost as if in relief, and stood to guide her toward the pilot chair. Allura gingerly climbed into it, hyperaware that she was entering a space that up until now had solely been her father’s domain. Alfor kept a warm hand on his shoulder as he tapped a few times at the holoscreens.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “Just open your mind to the Yellow Lion’s presence. She won’t harm you; her entire being is about defending others.”

“Like you,” Allura murmured distractedly. It took her a moment to realize that Alfor had paused.

“Yes,” he said. “Like me.”

Allura inhaled and tried to settle her mind. She folded her hands in her lap, leaned back and closed her eyes. For several ticks, nothing at all happened. And then, like a slow sunrise, Allura became aware of a _presence_. It was so large, was the thing. It was deep and ponderous as a planet, as rich and kind as the soil that supported life. Allura got the strange sense of looking down a winding, endless cave and knowing that something at its heart was looking back.

At that moment, she heard something. Or, ‘hear’ wasn’t the right verb. But a series of ideas appeared in her head, and they sounded a bit like her own mental voice, but off somehow. Deeper and richer. Yet Allura wasn’t scared, because the voice was also wide and comforting as a valley, steady as grinding tectonic plates.

The voice that wasn’t her own voice told Allura that she was welcome. Allura hesitated for a moment before mentally thanking the voice for permitting her attendance, just the way she had been taught in her lessons. The presence gave her a rolling wave of acknowledgment. After another moment of consideration, Allura tried asking the presence how it was. The reply was confusing in its terseness, and Allura had to puzzle it out before she settled on the rough translation of, _I am_. Except there was so much stowed in that. A sense of unbound pleasure in the sheer act of existing, an undertow of acceptance that it could end any tick without warning, a deep awareness that however long this existence lasted, it would be miniscule compared to the timescale of the universe itself. Allura replied that this was a very wise way to think about things. The presence seemed amused at this, and something rumbled so deeply that Allura felt it in her molars. She realized it was a laugh.

Then, the presence offered her a new thought. Allura sifted through it for a moment, the way she sifted grains of sand through her fingers. She caught the idea of _dust_ , of small things swirling together. And _growth_ , the kind that happened over eons and eons in miniscule units, the kind of growth only nonliving things could manage. Then _moons_ and _planets_ and _stars_ , all borne of dust and time and gravity working over and over again in their infinite patience.

“Oh,” she said, and the act of vocalizing her thoughts threw her off. Her eyes flickered open, and she took a moment to register that she was still perched in the pilot’s chair with her father just behind her. She twisted around and stared up at him. “She really is thinking about dust becoming planets,” she said.

Alfor’s face broke into a gentle grin. “Very good, my girl.”

“I did it?” Allura asked, brightening. “Is that what it’s like when you pilot her?”

“Similar.” Alfor kneeled in front of Allura. “What did you think?”

“She’s so nice,” Allura said softly, placing a hand on one of the controls. “She’s…she’s warm. And big. And _kind_.” It elicited the same feeling in Allura’s chest that she got from her father, but she didn’t think to mention it.

“She is a dear friend,” Alfor said. He shifted slightly. “Would you want to meet the other lions? Talk to them too?”

Allura’s eyes widened. “Really?” she breathed. “Is that allowed?”

“I am in discussions with the other paladins about it. I think that most of them will agree.” He frowned. “Most,” he repeated. Allura knew, without even thinking about it, which paladin would dislike the idea of someone else talking to his lion.

“Why would you want me to talk to them?” she asked.

Alfor leaned back on his heels. “I have been thinking for many years,” he said. “That right now, Voltron is five separate threads tying themselves together. And it works well so long as we all work together in harmony.” He hesitated. “But if..if something were to happen, Allura. If a paladin were to leave or die or—something else. Voltron would fall into turmoil. And in that case, it would be best to have someone outside of Voltron, yet still connected to it, who could keep things tied together. Someone who could step in and pilot any one of the lions. Or call them together if they were scattered. A guide rope. An anchor.”

“Me,” Allura said.

“Perhaps,” Alfor said. “I need to discuss with the druids how it would work. It might be hard, Allura darling, even for someone with your raw talent. It’s not something we’ve ever tried before. I would need to tie your quintessence, your life force, to the lions. You and they would be bound in a unique way.”

Allura tangled her fingers together, keeping her back straight and her breathing even and careful. She could barely grasp at the edges of what her father was suggesting; it felt too far away and huge. But he was asking for her help, and she didn’t know how she could say no, either. If her father thought it needed to be done, then it was surely the best thing to do.

At that moment, Allura realized that something was pressed against her mind. The Yellow Lion. She gave Allura an impression of unending support, as cavernous and unyielding as bedrock. Allura breathed in.

“Do I have to decide now?” she asked.

“No, of course not,” Alfor promised. “It wouldn’t happen until you’re older. Many rotations from now. But I want you to be aware of it.” Allura nodded slowly. Alfor made a small sound and stood. He picked her up, perching her on his hip and letting her hide her face in his neck. “I’m sorry,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “I’m giving you too much to think about at once, aren’t I? Let’s forget about this for a bit. We should go down to the kitchens and see what they have in the ovens right now.”

“All right,” Allura murmured, tucking herself into her father’s chest. She became aware that she was starting to get too big to be carried and coddled like this. That one day soon, it would have to stop.

“Papa?” she asked as Alfor carried her to the cockpit’s entrance. “Can I come back later and talk to the Yellow Lion again?”

Alfor chuckled. “You liked it?”

“I told you, she’s nice.”

Something rumbled like an earthquake at the back of her mind, and Allura’s lips fluttered into a grin.

A bit later, the pair of them entered the kitchens. Alfor bent down to let Allura slide to the floor, and she darted to her favorite cook to see what he might have to offer. A few dobashes later, she was chewing on a dense yuli bun and half listening to her father and the head chef discuss the menu for some diplomatic dinner in a few quintents. Suddenly, a voice cut through the kitchen’s usual noise.

“Ah, Alfor. There you are.”

Allura was watching her father, saw how his shoulders jerked ever so slightly. So small, almost enough to miss if she hadn’t been paying attention. Then Alfor turned to Zarkon and grinned cordially.

“Give me another tick,” he said. “We’re trying to puzzle out this menu. Unless you can tell me whether the Thea people eat meat.”

“No notion of that,” Zarkon said. He caught Allura’s eye and gave her a deep nod. “Hello, Princess.”

“Hello,” she replied.

Allura found that she couldn’t quite summon a real smile for him.

* * *

 

**Present Day, Somewhere in System Quadrant 694**

It’s been a hard few vargas. Harder than most. Allura supposes that a malfunctioning castle and almost steering all of them into a star and losing the last vestige of King Alfor will do that. Allura’s paladins had straggled to bed looking tired and worn thin, and Allura had gotten a hard sting in her throat when she considered that she hadn’t done her job properly. She was supposed to protect her people, however few. And instead she’d almost killed them all.

Coran makes several insistences that Allura go to bed too, but Allura is too jittery to manage anything like that. Instead, after assuring Coran yet again that she’ll be fine, she retreats to her office and tries to busy herself by reviewing ship diagnostics. There’s no telling what will need to be repaired tomorrow, and keeping the castle in working order is paramount, second only to Voltron in its importance to their effort. But just a few dobashes into her reading, Allura realizes that she’s not absorbing a word of what she’s reading.

“Ugh,” she mutters, leaning back in her chair. She runs her hands over her face, inhaling and exhaling in an effort to get her mind in order. Not that it works; Allura always half suspected that her instructors were full of quiznak when they kept trying to get her to do breathing exercises to focus her mind. Instead, Allura grabs her datapad and leaves the room in large, loping strides. She doesn’t think too hard about where she’s going, but she’s also unsurprised when she finds herself in front of the Yellow Lion’s hangar.

Allura takes a deep breath before pressing her hand to the door’s pad. It opens with a quiet hiss, and Allura almost feels a physical weight come off her shoulders when she enters. The Yellow Lion is a dim, looming shape. Allura smiles at her, and just like 10,000 years ago, she imagines that the lion smiles back.

Allura would have liked to climb into the cockpit like she used to as a child, but Alfor is no longer the Yellow Paladin, and there’s a basic level of politeness to these things. So Allura hitches up her skirt and clambers on top of the Yellow Lion’s front right paw. She sits cross-legged with the datapad in her lap, but she doesn’t bother to turn it on. Instead she leans back and peers up at the underside of the Yellow Lion’s jaw. If she closes her eyes and remains very still, she can almost imagine that she’s back on Altea and waiting to meet her father. Almost.

“He’s gone,” she tells the Yellow Lion. “Or, he’s been gone for a long time. But now everything about him is truly gone. Except you.” She inhales. “Do you ever think about him?” she asks. Her voice echoes in the hangar. The presence stirs, and for a fleeting moment, Allura gets a sensation of two minds—one large and deep, one small and bright—flying in a long-ago sky. Allura’s lips tug up as her eyes prickle.

A scuff echoes through the hangar. Allura yanks her eyes open and whips her head over to find Hunk halfway through the door, staring at her with wide brown eyes.

“I—“ Hunk takes a step back. “Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean. Uh. I couldn’t sleep, so I—sorry.”

“No, no,” Allura calls out. “Please, don’t apologize. It’s your lion. I’m the intruder here.” Hunk pauses, but after a moment he comes back through the door. He sways just inside the hangar, looking torn. Allura pats the metal of the Yellow Lion’s paw. “I couldn’t get my work done,” she says. “Would you like to talk?”

“Sure,” Hunk says carefully. He crosses the hangar in quick steps and clambers on top of the paw. Allura is distantly aware of the Yellow Lion’s pleasure at having them both in her company; it manifests as that rumble somewhere in Allura’s molars. Hunk peers up at the Yellow Lion, and his mouth flicks up at the edges.

“Aw, she’s purring,” he says. He glances at Allura. “Or, I dunno. I call it that. It’s like a happy rumbling in my head, so I _figure_ it’s purring. Did lions purr on Altea? Or, I guess, did you have lions? That’s actually something I’ve been meaning to ask about. There’s some crazy convergent evolution happening if both of us have lions and I—“ He snaps his mouth shut. “Sorry. Rambling.”

Allura smiles. “It’s fine.”

Hunk flashes her a small smile in return, his shoulders relaxing. “So, d’you work in everyone’s hangars? It’s perfectly fine; I don’t think anyone would mind. Just curious.”

“Not usually,” Allura admits. “But I tend to come to the Yellow Lion’s hangar the most.”

“Really? Why?” Hunk asks.

Allura hesitates, but Hunk has a right to know about his predecessor, doesn’t he? She runs her finger along the edge of the datapad, lips pursed. “The Yellow Lion was the first lion I properly connected to. And as a child, I spent quite a bit of my time with her. She’s almost like…not a mother. An aunt.”

“Yeah?” Hunk seems charmed at the idea, glancing up at the Yellow Lion. “Actually, I can totally see that. She’s cool, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Allura says, smirking lightly at the Earth terminology. “Cool.” She hesitates before she adds, “She’s one of the few things I have left of my father, now.” Hunk stills, and Allura turns to look at him properly. “My father was the Yellow Paladin, before. I don’t know if I or Coran ever told you.”

“I—seriously?” Hunk straightens; his expression is hard to read. “Alfor? Like, _the_ King Alfor? He was Yellow’s pilot?”

“For many, many years,” Allura says. “You seem surprised.”

“No I just—“ Hunk wrinkles his nose, looking into the near distance. “Dunno. I guess I thought a king would pilot one of the more…forward lions. Like Red or Black.”

Allura sets aside the datapad and draws her knees up to her chest. “Sometimes,” she says, “a good king is not the one who is best in battle, but the one who can best carry his people.” Allura tilts her head, running a hand through her hair thoughtfully. “Alfor was always very good at that; it’s what made him so compatible with the Yellow Lion and her devotion to defending and sustaining. Everything Alfor did was for the greater good. Everything was about trying to diminish harm to the most people.” Even when that meant a high price for a few. Even when it meant tying his daughter’s life force to Voltron. Even when it meant pushing her into cryosleep and then dying and then sacrificing the last remaining scraps of his consciousness to save her one last time. Better people would have admired Alfor’s sacrifice. And Allura does admire it, but she finds the sentiment largely drowned in sheer frustration. Anger, even, that he had to be so thoroughly self-effacing. And quietly, Allura knows that the bud of resentment in her chest means she would never have been the Yellow Lion’s pilot. She’s a tad too selfish, a tad too impatient and grasping.

“Allura?”

“Mm.” Allura jerks her head toward Hunk. “Apologies. I was thinking.”

“About?”

Allura exhales. “About how I’m not much like my father.”

“Oh.” Hunk frowns. “Really?”

“He was always much more patient than me,” Allura says. She’s distantly aware that maybe she shouldn’t be so open with Hunk, but at the same time, she can’t bring herself to care enough to stop. “Much more generous. Self-sacrificing to a fault. Honestly, you’re closer to his personality.”

“That’s a compliment, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

Hunk’s eyes suddenly crinkle at their edges. “But?” he asks.

“But what?”

“You’ve got an expression like…” Hunk waved a hand, thinking. “Dunno. It’s the way I feel when I think about my dad. Like, I love him. But there’s plenty about him that seriously ticks me off.”

“Really?” Allura tilts her head. “Like what?”

“He’s a little bit of a deadbeat, to be honest,” Hunk says. And his tone is light but his shoulders are stiff. “He, uh, he left me and my sister right after my mom died. Dumped us with my grandmas and disappeared somewhere in the mainland. And I get it. He was really torn up; he was dealing with the death of someone he loved. But he had two kids who really _needed_ him, and we’d just lost our mom too, you know? And he—“ Hunk cuts himself off, shrugging. “Dunno. It turned out fine. My grandmas have done an awesome job raising me and Lani, and I see dad a couple times a year when he comes out to visit us.”

“But he still did something that hurt you,” Allura says. “And it’s hard to forget that.”

Hunk gives her a crooked smile. “Basically.”

Allura sighs, wrapping her arms around her legs. “Sometimes, it’s hard for me to even pinpoint what about my father frustrates me so much. Because he’s—he was a wonderful person. He was an excellent king, an attentive father, a strong paladin, a good friend. But he was also so self-effacing and thought so much of the greater good that sometimes he seemed to forget that not everyone is like that. _Most_ people aren’t like that. He demanded too much of himself, and in the process, he demanded too much of the people around him. I—he didn’t _have_ to bind his only child to Voltron and to the castle, you know. He could have found someone else to do it. But he asked me, and I was young, and I loved him and wanted to be like him, so I said yes.”

“Allura.” Hunk shifts; his expression is troubled. “Did you not want that?”

“I did! I do.” Allura threads her fingers through her hair, gritting her teeth. “I don’t know. I love the lions; I love piloting the castle. But sometimes I wish I’d walked into this on my own. Instead of clutching my father’s hand the whole time. And then he had the gall to force me into safety and go die, and now he’s gone, and I’m left with...” She lets out a ragged sound. “I almost killed everyone today. Because I was so relieved to have my father’s guidance, I was willing to believe something so obviously fabricated. I’m not ready to lead; I’m not _him_.”

Allura stares hard at the opposite wall, stiff and mortified. Hunk shouldn’t be seeing this; he shouldn’t be exposed to how utterly inexperienced his leader is. He deserves better; they all deserve better.

“Allura?” Hunk’s voice is far too gentle, and Allura tightens her shoulders. “Hey, Allura,” Hunk says again, more firmly this time. “Can I tell you something?”

“What?”

“I don’t think anyone is asking you to be Alfor.” Allura glances at Hunk and finds him watching her with a serious expression. “I don’t think anyone _wants_ you to be Alfor. That’s not who we need right now. I think we need you to be Allura.” Allura snorts. “No, listen, I know that’s cheesy as hell, but I’m serious!” Hunk protests. “Allura, we’d all be completely lost without you. We sure wouldn’t have freed the Balmera on our own.”

“It’s one civilization,” Allura murmurs.

“Which is one more free civilization than there was before,” Hunk says. “That’s worth something.”

“I…yes, you’re right.” Allura sighs. “I suppose as a child, I thought that my father made his decisions because he knew they’d be the right ones. And I keep waiting for that same intuition to come to me. Except it’s not happening, and it makes me wonder if I’m doing something wrong.”

“Man, I feel you there,” Hunk says. “At least you got some sort of training for what you’re doing, though. I’m pretty much flying blind.”

Allura smiles lightly at him. “You’re doing a splendid job, Hunk. The events on the Balmera are proof of that.”

“Heh, thanks.” A faint blush tinges his cheeks. He rubs at the back of his neck, looking into the middle distance thoughtfully. “I guess,” he says at length. “If we’re all flailing, we’re doing it as a team.”

“There is that,” Allura allows.

Hunk glances at her. “I’m sorry you had to lose your father again, though,” he says. “It’s not fair.”

“It’s war,” Allura says, lifting one shoulder.

“Still.”

“Yes. Still.” She feels a light nudge of comfort at the back of her mind, and she places a hand on the Yellow Lion’s paw.

Hunk leans back on his hands. “You want to tell me about Alfor?”

Allura raises her eyebrows. “How so?”

“Whatever you want. Stories. Good, bad whatever.” He grins. “It’d be nice to know something about my predecessor.”

“Well.” Allura shifts so her legs are crossed, her hands in her lap. She looks up at the Yellow Lion and smirks. “There was the time I was traveling with my father and we got lost in the Keti system.”

“You got _lost_?”

“It’s a very remote region, Hunk.”

As Allura launches into the story, she can’t stop the slight sensation of bittersweetness. Talking and laughing in the Yellow Lion’s hangar is something she’d always associated with her father. But she can’t help but feel some fondness for the way Hunk throws his head back and laughs loudly, without real inhibition. It’s nothing like her father’s staider personality, but it’s still somehow familiar.

Hunk is a good soul; she knows this. He’s ideally suited to the Yellow Lion, and it’s Allura job to guide him and make him the best paladin he can be. That’s her job for all the paladins. And of course it will be difficult and frightening, but as Allura acts out her story and makes Hunk double over with laughter, she can’t help but think that they’ll find their way in the end.

The low, deep, comforting rumble coming from the Yellow Lion tells Allura that she’s not the only one who thinks so.

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all can take Yellow Paladin Alfor from my cold, dead grip. I'm looking at you, Dreamworks.
> 
> Also, some headcanon on Hunk's background. Still HC that Hunk was raised by his lesbian Hawaiian grandmas, but now I'm including an extra dose of tragic backstory.


End file.
